Students' competency -- The intersection of didactics and organisation of higher education

Abstract

Output orientation in the realm of education has become a requirement for higher education that is now slowly starting to be manifested in its curricula. This raises the question: what competences students are supposed to develop in the course of their studies and how these competences can be developed. In a first step, this article will therefore deal with the notion of competence. The next step involves an analysis of the various approaches to didactics in higher education, which plays an important role in the promotion of students' competency as well as in the design of individual lesson plans and of the curriculum for individual classes as well as for the entire programme. This section will also touch on the interconnection of research and teaching. It will be shown that, due to the specific way in which higher education is organized, any course of studies promotes the development of competences, which might seem, at first sight, beyond the grasp of didactics of higher education. The core of this article will be the introduction of a model which depicts the development of students' competency in the intersection of didactics and organisation of higher education. The development of students' competences is subject to various factors influencing each other. This article does not aim at presenting conclusive results but is intended to spark a productive debate.